


Relief

by alphabetcities



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphabetcities/pseuds/alphabetcities
Summary: "The silence used to be reassuring, but Baze has come to take comfort in the sounds; the soft brush of Chirrut’s fingers on the worn stone, his long meandering stories, his steady breathing as he sleeps."There was a time when the empty night was enough for Baze, but now he is not so sure.Baze guards the Eastern Gate from sunset to sunrise and doesn't see another soul, until Chirrut decides it would be a fine place to sleep.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There's this little exchange in the novelisation where Chirrut talks about how Baze used to be devout, and where Cassian refers to Baze as "your guardian", and it's basically my favourite part of the whole novelisation, and I was inspired to write something on it. So this is my idea of how they could have met, back when they were very different but also familiar people.

Everything is quiet at the Eastern Gate. NiJedha is not a place where people stay up late; it is a city of hard workers who drag their weary bodies to bed the second the sun sets. At this time of night, Baze Malbus, guardian of the Eastern Gate, does not see another soul, and the only light comes from his lantern, and the moon and stars up above.

In any other time or place, he would not be able to hear this shallow breathing, just slightly out of sync with his own, but in the silence of Jedha it is deafening.

“Who goes there?” He calls.

There’s movement from a tiny sheltered alcove set into the Eastern Wall. What Baze had previously mistaken for a pile of rags shifts, revealing a man. 

“Only someone trying to sleep. I’m no threat.” The man's eyes catch the light of the lantern in an unusual way.

“You can’t sleep here. Don’t you have a home to go to?”

The man looks up in Baze’s direction, a wry smile on his face. “Oh yes, a whole palace, filled with all the luxuries I could ever need. I just sleep on the streets for a bit of excitement.”

“I’m sorry. That was a stupid question.”

“Mmm, it was indeed. Now, will you let me sleep?” He returns to the alcove, not even waiting for an answer. Baze takes a deep breath.

“You can’t sleep here.” He repeats, as evenly as he can manage. “It’s holy ground.”

“Is it?” There is no sarcasm in the man’s voice, the question seems to be asked in genuine innocence. The pieces slot together in Baze’s head: the way the man’s eyes are fixed on a point just to the right of his head, the odd way they catch the light. The man is blind. 

“You’re at the Jedi temple, by the Eastern Gate."

"The Guardian of the Eastern Gate I knew was an old man. You sound younger." 

"My father. I took over the role when he passed."

"I see. And what am I attempting to sleep on?"

"A bench for pilgrims in need of rest."

“Am I a pilgrim if I came to be here by accident? Believe me, if I'd know the road led to the temple I never would have come here. Either way, I’m definitely in need of rest, something that you’re denying me right now.” 

“You don't believe in the Force?”

“Oh I believe in it. I just don't want anything to do with it.” the man replies, with an odd bitterness to his voice. “Now, are you going to force me to leave, or let me sleep?”

“I can’t leave my post.”

“That’s settled then,” the man replies triumphantly, and all Baze hears from him for the rest of the night are the sounds of his breathing. 

 

\---

 

He is there again the following evening as Baze takes his post, arranging a bundle of rags as a makeshift pillow upon the bench.

“You can’t sleep here.” Baze repeats, knowing full well it will work as well as it did last night. He feels the need to make a token protest, as much as he sounds like a broken holo-disk.

The man grins up at him.

“Ah, my night time companion. You’re not really one for pleasantries, are you?”

“I’m a guardian, I don’t need to be polite.”

"They can’t have chosen you to be the first thing that visitors see as they walk into the temple for your manners. I mean you haven’t even introduced yourself yet." He shakes his head as if to scold a child. "They must have picked you for your looks instead. Are you handsome?”

“My name is Baze Malbus.” He chooses to ignore the last question.

“Chirrut.” he replies, with a nod of the head vaguely in Baze’s direction. “Your voice comes from high above my head, Baze Malbus. Are you some kind of giant?”

Baze rolls his eyes. “There’s a guard tower up above you. Here, raise your hand.” Chirrut does so, and Baze bends down and reaches as far as he can, so their fingertips just about brush. Chirrut’s fingers are ice cold.

“You should sleep somewhere warmer.” Baze says. He is surprised at the level of concern in his voice, and frustrated by it. Jedha has many poor, and to start to care about them is a slippery slope that will lead to nothing but misery. “And you need to eat something. The temple provides meals for the needy at sunrise, you should go there in the morning.”

Chirrut’s eyes narrow, so that only the tiniest sliver of blue is visible. “I’m not stepping a foot past those gates.”

“Why not?”

He scoffs. “Because they’ll tell me that I’m blind because the Force wills it. That it’s part of the Force’s plan. That’s not something I need to hear. I am fine right here. Where else would I get my own handsome guardian, watching over me as I sleep?”

“I’m not your guardian.”

“Would you let anything happen to me?”

“No, never.” Baze startles himself with the force of his answer.

“Then you’re my guardian, aren’t you?” 

Baze has no answer to that. “Get some sleep.” he says gruffly.

\---

If Baze arrives at his post early enough he can see Chirrut approaching from the Pilgrim’s Road. It is the only road in NiJedha, and possibly Jedha in its entirety that is more than a dirt track, and it runs all the way from the market to the Northern Gate. Chirrut must follow his feet here from the market, feeling where the sand gives way to broad slabs of stone. He sees Chirrut turn the corner as the sun starts to set in the sky, one hand braced on the corner of the Eastern Wall. His fingers follow the wall round, until they bump into the robes of the statue that guards his alcove. Chirrut is a little unsteady on his feet, often stumbling over uneven ground.

The blindness seems to be a recent thing, from what he can gather. Chirrut talks frequently of his past, but all of his stories stop abruptly at a few years ago. He speaks of his sisters (seven of them, all terrible tricksters like himself) and he speaks of things he saw long ago, but he does not talk of how he lost his family or his sight, and Baze does not ask. 

\---

“What do you do during the day?” Chirrut asks him one evening.

“I sleep for the most part. There’s also training, and prayers.” Baze feels like a more more honest answer would be _I wait for you to come back_ , but Chirrut doesn’t need to know that. “What about you?”

“I hang around the market place mostly. I listen to interesting conversations and I annoy people until they give me food to make me go away.”

Baze snorts. “I’m surprised you’re not as fat as a Hutt. And you haven’t managed to annoy me away yet.”

“Maybe I don’t want you to go.” As always, it’s unclear how sincere Chirrut intends to be, and as always, it’s unclear to Baze just how exactly it makes him feel.

"If this is you trying not to be annoying then I shudder to think what you're normally like." he mutters, and Chirrut laughs. Chirrut's laughter is a wonderful thing, and it makes it hard for Baze to believe he ever missed the silence.

\---

“Is that a book?”

Chirutt’s voice startles Baze. It’s nearly sunrise, and Chirrut is rarely awake at this hour.

“I could read it to you, if you’d like.”

“It’s more that I miss reading itself. Taking the time for yourself, uncovering the story, that sort of thing. I appreciate the offer though.”

He stands facing his shelter but doesn’t move to lie down. There has been something different about Chirrut these past few nights, a sort of sadness that Baze can’t place. Chirrut talks longer into the night, sleeps less, but he often seems lost in thought, and his stories become shorter, and finish further back in the past.

“You should sleep.” Baze says. “You look exhausted.”

“There’s no point in sleeping tonight.”

“Why?”

Chirrut doesn't need to answer that question, as in that moment, the heavens open.

It rains rarely on Jedha, only a handful of days in a year, but never has there been a place where the saying _when it rains, it pours_ has been more fitting. The rain on Jedha is deafening, drowning, as if the whole moon itself was caught under some kind of celestial waterfall.

And there Chirrut stands in the middle of it, sightless eyes lost somewhere in the middle distance.

“Come up here.” Baze finds himself saying. He has to raise his voice over the cacophany of sound. “You’ll catch your death out there.”

Chirrut’s head snaps up.“Am I allowed up there?”

“No, but it’s never bothered you before.” Chirrut looks torn, and it is a while before he nods. “Okay. Put your hand on the statue and then feel to your right - a little upwards- there’s a rope that runs up the length of the stairs. Be careful, they’re steep, and slippery. Follow it up and then walk forward a few paces.”

Chirrut does so, and settles down beside him. Baze drapes his coat over Chirrut’s bony shoulders. He expects him to object, but he doesn’t.

“You knew it was going to rain.” Baze says quietly. It’s not a question.

“Yes. I used to pick up on things I had no reason to know when I was younger. I could tell when a woman was pregnant, before she even knew herself, if there would be fighting in the marketplace that day. That kind of thing.”

“You must be a bit Force sensitive. You should go to the Temple, the Jedi could-”

“No. Absolutely not.” Baze was shocked by the force of his answer, the way his usually sing-song voice became hard and abrupt. Chirrut must have felt Baze tense, as his face softens. “Sorry, my friend. The temple is a touchy subject, and the rain makes me a bit anxious. It makes it hard to hear what’s going on around me.” 

"I get it. No more Temple talk. And you need to get some rest."

Chirrut settles his head on Baze’s shoulder, but doesn't seem interested in sleeping, as in a few moments he's talking again. 

“Are you wearing fur? It’s very soft,” he comments, sounding almost like his normal self again.

“That’s my hair.”

“Ha! I’d imagined you were bald like a monk. I’ll have to update my mental picture of you.”

“And what does that look like?”

“Twelve feet tall, with bright green skin and tentacles like a rathtar.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Don’t worry, that’s exactly my type.” He smiles, and it's the first time Baze has seen him smile up close and it's blinding to him.

He's grateful for the rain that night. It gives him an excuse to lean in closer to Chirrut (with a mumbled comment on how cold it is), and more importantly, it masks the sound of his own heart thundering in his chest.

\---

The silence used to be reassuring, but Baze has come to take comfort in the sounds; the soft brush of Chirrut’s fingers on the worn stone, his long meandering stories, his steady breathing as he sleeps.

There was a time when the empty night was enough for Baze, but now he is not so sure.

 

\---

The following evening, when the sun sets and Chirrut approaches the eastern wall, Baze meets him there. He tenses at the sound of Baze’s footsteps. 

“It’s okay, it’s me, Baze. I just wanted to show you something.”

He places his hand over Chirrut’s and gently guides his hand down. “It’s not a book, but it’s a story, something you can read. There's carvings all down this wall describing the history of the Temple. You miss it by a few inches every day.”

Baze watches Chirrut's fingers trace the relief of a Jedi’s robes and sees understanding settle on his features. Baze nods, and walks back towards his post.

It’s nearly dawn when Chirrut makes it to the end of the wall. Baze watches as Chirrut’s fingers move from the rock to the empty air. His hand quivers just slightly, then falls to his side. He looks up at Baze, and there’s the orange light of the sunrise reflected in his eyes, a kaleidoscope of blue and orange that makes them look like opals. 

“Baze?”

“I’m still here. Dawn is about an hour away.”

Chirrut climbs the stairs, and settles down next to Baze. “Thank you.” he says with a smile. But the smile fades, and when he murmurs “You are too kind,” there is a bitterness and a sadness in his voice. 

\---

Something has shifted between them. Chirrut keeps on telling his stories, but the stories no longer grind to a halt as they approach the present. Tiny details start to leak through, and one day the dam breaks.

“When I was fifteen the Jedi came to my home. They said I was Force sensitive, strongly so, and invited me to come study at the temple. I refused. I didn’t want to leave my home, my sisters, I didn’t see why I should have to. 

Things went downhill from there very quickly. My sisters and I lost our home, and then I began to lose my sisters, one by one. They were all young, all healthy, they were all just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A bantha loose in the marketplace, a bad storm, caught in the crossfire of a turf war, things like that. For a while after that it was just me and my youngest sister, but she got ill - a rare illness the medics said, no known cure- and she passed. I got the same illness that she did, only it didn’t take my life, just my eyesight.”

“I’m so sorry. The chance of that happening -”

“Chance?” Chirrut snaps. “You think that it was chance? It was the Force, what else would it be? I refused its call and it took everything I cared about it return.”

Baze is incredulous. “You think the Force is punishing you?”

“Yes, and what's more I think it is justified. I didn’t answer the call because I was selfish, and now I must pay for it.”

He puts down his cup of caf and rests his warm hand on Baze’s cheek.

“Which means I need to leave, because you, my friend, are a kindness I do not deserve." He stand and feels for the guide rope.  
"And because I’m not risking the Force taking anyone else I care about.” 

 

\---

The next day the sun sets and Chirrut does not show. All Baze hears in the empty night are his own breaths and heartbeat, each quickening as the panic settles into his bones. He plays back the last conversation in his head over and over. It is almost a death wish, he realises with a sickening feeling. Chirrut intends to live a sad, short life, shunning all that makes him happy, out of some kind of misguided self-flagellation for a perceived crime.

Baze stands and looks out at NiJedha, watches its lights flicker out one by one. The post he has stood at every night since his father died seems unfamiliar and empty without Chirrut there. 

_Would Chirrut have made it far?_ He wonders but it is pointless of course, because regardless of where he is, Baze cannot leave the guard tower.

He feels trapped. He does not feel like a guardian in this moment, he feels like a prisoner. 

He stands, takes the lantern in his hand, and for the first time since he had been appointed Guardian, he leaves his post.

\---

He runs down the Pilgrim’s Road as fast as he can, to a market square that is a dark and empty. There’s no sign of Chirrut, and the homeless he shakes from their sleep have no answers for him. He curses Chirrut’s unpredictable nature. Chirrut had no ties here, he could have gone anywhere. 

No. That’s wrong.

Baze turns back to one of the homeless, an old man watching him warily with tired eyes.

“Can you point me to the graveyard? There’s money in it for you.”

“Your graveyard is over there,” he responds with a yawn. “I don’t understand the hurry, the dead will still be there in the morning.”

\---

 

Chirrut is crouched in a little ring of seven grave markers, his fingers ghosting over the inscriptions. He doesn’t hear Baze approach, and he startles when Baze speaks.

“I think you’re wrong about all of this.”

“Oh? You’re a devout man, I would have expected you, of all people to understand.”

"I've tried, but your theory makes no sense to me."

"Why not? Because it seems very clear to me." He gestures with his free hands and the markers surrounding them.

“Because I have stood at my post in all weather, every single night since my father passed. I have never doubted the importance of what I do, I have never wavered, never faltered. I have been nothing but loyal to the Force, every day of my life. But I risk losing the only person I care about. Do I deserve that? Where do I fit in your neat little theory of the Force punishing the wicked and rewarding the good?"

Chirrut is uncharacteristically silent. Baze sits down next to him, facing the sad little grave markers. Chirrut's grief is so thick and heavy that he feels like he could touch it.

“The Force doesn’t punish, Chirrut. It doesn’t bear grudges. It just gives people a nudge in the right direction sometimes. That's all.”

“Like guiding someone’s hand down so they find a story they didn’t know was there?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

"I always wondered if the Force lead me to your gate that night. There are many, many paths out of NiJedha, and yet I picked the one that took me to you." He takes a deep breath. "I thought it lead me to someone I could love so that it could take that away from me again."

"I think that even if that's what the Force wanted, it wouldn't succeed. I'm not going anywhere."

Chirrut's fingers fall away from the grave marker. "Okay." He nods. "Then I'm not going anywhere either."

\--

They walk up the Pilgrim’s Road hand in hand. There are decisions to be made, and Baze knows there will be consequences for leaving the temple, but he has decided they can wait until the sun comes up. 

“I still can’t believe you left your post.” Chirrut says, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of Baze's hand.

“I found a new one. I'm your Guardian, aren't I?”

Chirrut kisses him, with such force he nearly knocks the lantern from Baze's hand. When the break apart, his hand lingers for a moment on Baze’s face, as he feels the curve of his cheekbones, the ridge of his brow, the scars across his temple.

“There’s a story here too.” he says, with a smile.


End file.
